1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk drive enabling a tray door for DVDs, etc., to smoothly open and close.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional disk drive is described in the JP-A-2003-51181, one example of which will be explained with reference to FIG. 8 through FIG. 11. In this conventional disk drive, a player main body 2 provided with a disk D-placing tray 1 which can advance forward and backward (a, b) is disposed inside a housing 3, a synthetic-resin made front panel 3a of the housing 3 is provided with a tray insertion slot 4 opposed to the tray 1, a pair of approximately U-shaped arms 6 are protruded bilaterally to the back of the synthetic-resin made tray door 5 for opening and closing the tray insertion slot 4, a supporting shaft 7 protruded to the front end of the respective arms 6 is inserted into a circular aperture 9 of a pair of brackets 8 bilaterally protruded to the back of the front panel 3a in such a manner that it can rotate in the directions of the arrows c and d, both ends of a door spring 10 wound up by one of the supporting shafts 7 are engaged with a projecting stopper 6a of one of the arms 6 and with the rear face of the front panel 3a, by which the tray door 5 is constantly given a force toward the direction of closing movement c and disposed on the tray insertion slot 4, and a cover plate 11 for the tray is protruded to both ends of the back plane of the tray door 5. In FIG. 8, 12 denotes a piece for preventing removal of the supporting shaft protruded to the back of the front panel 3a in close proximity to the other bracket 8, 13 denotes a power source button, 14 denote various operation buttons, and 15 denotes an ejection button.
Ejection operation will be described as follows. As shown by the solid line in FIG. 9A, when the ejection button 15 is depressed, with the tray insertion slot 4 closed by the tray door 5, the tray 1 is moved forward (a) based on the ejection signal, the advanced (a) tray 1 pushes a tray door 5 via the cover plate 11 against the door spring 10, by which the tray door 5 is axially opened and moved (d) around the supporting shaft 7 (refer to the virtual line shown in FIG. 9A). After the disk D is removed from the most-forward advanced (a) tray 1 and a new disk D is placed, the ejection button 15 is depressed, by which the tray 1 is moved backward (b) on the basis of the ejection signal and accommodated in the player main body 2 (refer to FIG. 9A), and the tray door 5 is approximately at the same time closed (c) by the door spring 10 to close the tray insertion slot 4.
In the above-described conventional structure, since the tray door 5 is only opened and closed (c, d) axially around the supporting shaft 7, it is necessary to provide a space a for the tray at the lower edge of the tray insertion slot 4 in front of the front panel 3a so that the tray door 5 does not contact with the front panel 3a at the tire of opening and closing operation (c, d) and the lower plane of the tray door is exposed outside due to the space α, thus making the appearance poor.
Further, as shown by the single dotted line and the double dotted line in FIG. 9B, there is a case where the tray door 5 is deviated from an original position due to manufacturing error or deformation, the periphery 5a of the tray door 5 is slightly away from the periphery of the tray insertion slot 4, and the tray insertion slot 4 cannot be reliably closed by the tray door 5. In this case, it is impossible to correct the positional deviation, therefore, dust may enter into the housing 3 from a clearance between the tray door 5 and the tray insertion slot 4.